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Midwest Performance Cars came to Sparkfactor looking for help with an ad. They wanted to place an ad in the Porsche Club of America Chicago’s magazine to advertise their Porsche repair services. They also wanted to update the previous ad to look more inviting and have images take up more space.

In Chicago, there are Special Service Areas (SSAs) throughout the city, streets that are economic thoroughfares in the neighborhood. SSAs are under local neighborhood organizations and provide services to business owners, like facade and building improvements and marketing and advertising of the area.

The Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council has several SSAs under its care, one of which is SSA #39 Brighton Park and Archer Heights, which was established in 2007. These two lesser known neighborhoods on the Southwest Side of the city are connected through the SSA, which runs southwest down a portion of Archer Ave from California in Brighton Park to Pulaski in Archer Heights. The SSA commission wanted to create a brand identity and an ad campaign to increase the awareness of the area, not only to bring in more visitors from around the city and tourists that happen to pass through the transportation in the area, but also to encourage locals to see their neighborhood as a place to invest in with their time and money.

The Rogers Park Business Alliance has a few different City of Chicago Special Service Areas (SSAs) under its purview, including SSA #43. SSA #43 includes a good portion of Devon Avenue (a busy east/west street in Chicago) and a part of Western Avenue (the city's longest continuous street). SSA #43 wanted to develop a brand identity for the area and an ad campaign to draw people—city residents and tourists alike—to the businesses to boost the local economy and show off what Devon has to offer.

Baseball is back! Today was supposed to be the opening day for Wrigley Field, but with the snow that fell this morning in Chicago, the Cubs decided to postpone the game, while the White Sox found a pretty ingenious way of dealing with the snow on their field to still play their home opener.

As the Cubs were prepping for Opening Day, I'm sure they wanted to get as many people as possible in the stands. In the days leading up April 9, I came across Facebook ads in my feed reminding me that Opening Day tickets were still available.

The ads themselves are simple: nine words, the Cubs hashtag for the year, and a couple of photos with stadium seats. But there's so much communicated in such a simple ad that it should act as the template for your future social ads.

To promote their new product, Navistar launched a sweepstakes, giving away an International Diamond Renewed Prostar truck to one lucky winner. Sparkfactor was hired to create a landing page and form for the sweepstakes, as well as photograph the prize truck.

Even if you don't consider yourself a writer or much of a reader, you likely instinctively know what dramatic structure is. Made popular by Freytag's Pyramid, dramatic structure argues that there are five main components to any narrative or story told: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. This rough outline is not only used in written works like novels, but is also in movies to move the plot along. In the same way, marketers can employ dramatic structure to improve the quality of visual storytelling. Here are ways to use Freytag's Pyramid throughout common visual tactics.

Sparkfactor had helped Wattage Personal Training with website updates in the past, so when they needed to do a more substantial update, they came to us for help.

To update images of their West Loop location, we started with a Google Business View virtual tour. The Google virtual tour allows potential clients to see the inside of the open workout space, which includes the latest equipment and techonology to help clients acheive their goals.

Sparkfactor has worked closely with the Rogers Park Business Alliance in the past, so when we saw the RFP for a redesign of their website, we knew we wanted to help. After winning the bid and discussing with decision-makers about what they were looking for in a new site, we developed a site that's more image-centered to showcase the neighborhood, from restaurants to beach fronts, from stores to parks. We used the colors in the RPBA logo as highlight colors throughout the site for calls-to-action buttons, the header, the footer, and elsewhere.

Nick Cullen, founder of Silver Linings Clothing, asked Sparkfactor to give his unique clothing vision a place to live on the Internet. We created simple e-commerce site where guests can purchase Silver Linings' customizable mens dress shirts and interchangeable collars and cuffs. But before we could launch the website, we needed to add images of the available options.

May is Photography Month, and we love photography here at Sparkfactor. This week, we'll be publishing a series of posts based on photography. Today's post focuses on the importance of a virtual tour.

Humans are creatures of habit and want to go where they feel comfortable and known. To have a tour of your business right on the search results page is a way to separate yourself from the pack and connect with your audience.